Saturday was a scheduled team ride. The weather was poor, cold and raining the first hour and very windy. Some of the team was off cross racing and I guess others decided since it is off season to pass on this ride due to weather so it was a small group of 6 of us. Cinders are not used where I live in poor weather but for some reason we had quite a bit in places on the roads and experienced a few flats including myself but mine decided to not go flat until over night Saturday. So I woke up to a rear flat on my road bike. I always am cleaning my bike and since I had to change the flat I cleaned my bike and pulled my front wheel. I felt something under the crown of my fork so I took a little better look. This is what I found:

The fork is a 7 year old Alpha Q GS30 that I bought from a builder raw. I would hit it pretty frequently with 303 for UV protection but can't say the underside of the crown got hit that often. I'm not sure if that contributed to this kind of deterioration of the carbon. There are two small holes and you can see the fork mounting bolt on the front brake.

The only good things about this is I have a brand new GS30 that is painted as a spare and the other is that with such a windy day we came back at a pretty fast pace hitting speeds up to 61 km and the fork did not fail!

Words of wisdom? Clean your bike often and inspect everything closely. Also the underside of this crown was fine last time I had a look at it a few weeks ago.

I could see that sort of thing happening if you're running 25c tires (or bigger). I had an older 3t fork that just couldnt take a 25 without the sand and grit rubbing the fork right at that same spot. You can see plenty of scratches leading to that center area which would imply the same type of damage. Just a thought.

...an actual hole doesn't just happen from carbon delamination. Even if a rock never got wedged in there u could have hit a rock that got shot onto the underside or a nail or other sharp object. Carbon doesn't just disintegrate and fade away leaving a hole that appears like a puncture wound. EM3

Seven years seem pretty good to me for a non-coated carbon fork. Both UV radiation and moisture have adverse effects on the mechanical properties of the polymeric epoxy matrix, while the carbon fibers are not affected significantly by either environment. The polymer matrix in a fiber-reinforced composite serves to transfer the loads to the reinforcing fibers and provide shear strength. Its not the non-coated carbon but the non-coated epoxy that leads to reduced damage tolerance and lack of long-term durability. But really seven years is good, consider the flat a blessing.

Who is online

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum